What are shockwaves?
Let’s start with shock. Shock, in mechanics, is an abrupt change of acceleration. I’m talking zero to sixty (or sixty to zero) in ZERO seconds. Think of jumping off a ledge, and landing on your feet with your legs straight. Ouch.
When jumping from a height and landing on your feet with you legs straight, your body feels the shock from an abrupt change in acceleration
If you were instead to bend your knees as you land, you would begin to decelerate and feel less of the change in acceleration. There would still be a force exerted through you from the ground, but your knee-bending would absorb some of that.
So that’s kind of what shock is. That was a lame an overgeneralized example but I hope it somewhat got the point across.
Shockwaves, on the other hand, are like an extreme version of the dude landing with his legs straight. And they’ll hurt you more than pulling a hammie.
Picture this: a bunch of particles floating around in the air. Nitrogen, oxygen, dust, oh my! They’re all floating around, constantly moving and bumping into each other, but on average they are relatively far apart.
Then BOOM! Shockwave hits and the particles SLAM together. Resulting in a high pressure jump.
So why do we care about shockwaves? Well when high explosives (o0o0o0o0o) detonate, they create a supersonic (faster than the speed of sound) shockwave.
That’s just the basics of shockwaves! We will get more into rarefaction, shockwave equations, spallation, and other effects in the future.
It Goes Boom 